[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 11




TEXAS----execution

Texas executes Christopher Wilkins


A Fort Worth jury sent Christopher Wilkins to death row for killing 2 men he 
admitted shooting over a $20 phony drug deal after Wilkins said he didn't care 
whether he was sentenced to death.

"Look, it is no big deal," Wilkins calmly said from the witness stand at his 
2008 trial.

On Wednesday, more than 11 years after the killings, the 48-year-old Wilkins 
was put to death by lethal injection at The Walls Unit, in Huntsville, Texas.

Christopher Wilkins was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the execution. The court's ruling on 
appeals for Wilkins came about three hours before his scheduled lethal 
injection.

Wilkins' attorneys had argued to the Supreme Court that he had poor legal help 
at his trial and during earlier appeals. State attorneys argued courts had 
rejected similar appeals and that defense lawyers were simply employing 
delaying tactics.

Wilkins' execution is the nation's 1st this year.

In 2005, after serving time in prison for gun possession, Wilkins drove a 
stolen truck to Fort Worth, where police tied him to several aggravated 
assaults and burglaries. There he befriended 2 men, 40-year-old Willie Freeman 
and 33-year-old Mike Silva, who duped him into paying $20 for a piece of gravel 
he thought was a rock of crack cocaine.

According to court records, Wilkins said he shot Freeman on Oct. 28, 2005, for 
laughing about the scam, then he shot Silva because he was there.

Their bodies were found in a ditch. Wilkins' fingerprints were found in Silva's 
wrecked SUV, and a pentagram matching one of Wilkins' numerous tattoos had been 
carved into the hood.

"When I get wound up, I have a fuse that is short," Wilkins testified. "I don't 
think about what I am doing."

He also admitted that a day earlier he had shot and killed another man, Gilbert 
Vallejo, 47, outside a Fort Worth bar in a dispute over a pay phone, and about 
a week later he used a stolen car to try to run down 2 people because he 
believed 1 of them had taken his sunglasses.

"I know they are bad decisions," Wilkins said of his actions. "I make them 
anyway."

"I think subconsciously, I've been trying to kill myself or get myself killed 
since I was probably 12 or 13 years old," he added.

Kevin Rousseau, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney, described Wilkins 
as "a professional criminal. Very violent. He used violence as a means of 
achieve his means on a routine basis."

Wilkins' attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, 
saying he had poor legal help at trial and during other appeals, and that the 
courts should have authorized money to his current lawyer to support other 
appeals and a clemency petition.

"He has never had a meaningful opportunity at any stage to develop that claim, 
to have any court address it on the merits, or even to have it considered as 
part of a petition for executive clemency," attorney Seth Waxman, told the 
justices in his appeal.

Stephen Hoffman, an assistant Texas attorney general, said investigation of 
those arguments "would either be redundant or fruitless," and called the 
appeals a delaying tactic.

In his appeals, Wilkins had argued that his attorney ignored his wish to plead 
guilty and did not put on a vigorous defense and that an appellate lawyer had a 
huge conflict of interest, having already accepted a job with the prosecutor's 
office.

30 convicted killers were executed in the U.S. last year, the lowest number 
since the early 1980s. 7 were carried out last year in Texas, the fewest since 
1996.

9 Texas inmates have already been scheduled to die in the early months of 2017.

Wilkins becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texa 
and the 539th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 
2017.

Wilkins becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the 
USA and the 1443rd overall since the nation resumed executions on Januarty 17, 
1977.

(sources: Dallas Morning News, Associated Press & Rick Halperin)

*************************************

Executions under Greg Abbott, Jan. 21, 2015-present----21

Executions in Texas: Dec. 7, 1982----present-----539

Abbott#--------scheduled execution date-----name------------Tx. #

22---------January 25---------------Kosoul Chanthakoummane----540

23---------January 26---------------Terry Edwards---------541

24---------February 2---------------John Ramirez----------542

25---------February 7---------------Tilon Carter----------543

26---------March 14-----------------James Bigby-----------544

27---------April 12-----------------Paul Storey-----------545

28---------June 28------------------Steven Long-----------546

(sources: TDCJ & Rick Halperin)